Justice League of America #23

One-sentence summary: The second battle against Amazon continues in a truly ridiculous fashion that goes essentially nowhere.

Alright, first off, I am biased on this issue. I'm, for whatever reason, just not a fan of Vixen, so how prominently they're trying to feature her doesn't jive well with me regardless of story quality. That said, this issue is pretty weak. It opens, essentially, on Amazo taking on the Flash, which was actually somewhat interesting. The main glaring problem is that they try to cover up a potential problem (one that always comes up with characters like Amazo) with another one; w/Flash's super speed he could easily kill everyone, but if Flash can take it away why didn't he do that before getting himself beaten to a pulp? I know I know, it's a comic book, and normally I don't take issue with these sorts of things, but clearly the entire sequence was done entirely because the writer had taken issue with a similar problem. C'est la vie, all the same.

I've admitted in the past to being a story-lover, and it's true, so when an entire issue features nothing but a fight going nowhere, yes, I tend to get irritated. Maybe other people love meaningless fight issues? Personally, I'd at least require really original art to make up for such a thing. Instead, the art here...meh. I didn't care for the overly sketchy, lots-of-muscle-lines, style back when it was popular in the '90s. Now I don't care for it and it feels dated.

I'm sad about not liking this series right now. As a concept, I love good superhero teams, and I'm pretty ok with the current Justice League line-up. so it's actually a bit of a challenge for me not to like this series. However, using Amazo twice in less than two years (not to mention the arc he had in the now-canceled JLA Classified) is overkill for a pretty lame character (sorry everybody, but any mimic-type character is inherently lame due to the fact they never make any sense, even in comics).

I might be biased going into this, but, sadly, I'm more biased towards liking this series, and I still can't say I even vaguely like this.

JLA #11

One-sentence summary: It's a brave move to do a stylistically different filler issue featuring two of the more minor characters this early in a book's lifetime, but with the JLA they can get away with it without the result being too bad.

I'm not sure what I think of this one. I've been very much a fan of the first ten issues of JLA, so on one hand I definitely wanted more of the same; however, a mix-up here and there is good, and for a filler/standalone issue, this is actually pretty good. The art is definitely what makes it; without it, this would have been just another disaster/trapped story. However, the art, or lack thereof in some scenes, sets the proper mood for the issue. I also liked the touch of Red Arrow using trick arrows; too often in out of the normal stories, the characters tend to act out-of-character and forget about their individual bags of tricks.

I'm pretty neutral to Red Arrow, and have at times actively disliked Vixen, but I will give this story credit that I like them both a bit better, for different reasons, now. Red Arrow showed some grit, which is usually a plus for a character, and I was intrigued by the reveal on Vixen's powers.

Not too bad for a standalone. Definitely worth a look, even if it's just a brief one.